On Transphobia

Transphobia is the aversion to, anxiety regarding, or animus, in any combination or singly, towards trans people or transness.

Aversion is things like being disgusted, in opposition to, identifying something as repugnant, and exhibiting strong feelings about this. Aversion is the desire to avoid, the act of arguing to avoid or reduce encounters. It includes being unwilling to listen or accept factual,statements made by trans people. It also includes not wanting trans people in the restroom.

Anxiety is distress, worry, concern, and overt anxiousness about something or someone that is strongly expressed in physical, literal, or metaphorical terms. Anxiety is worry, concern, or anticipatory ideation relating to trans people or Transness. It includes prejudice against trans people, such as worrying about what they do in the restroom.

Animusis a strong and intense dislike. It involves devaluing the lives of people, erasing their dignity, opposing their civil and human rights, denying them the ability to mark themselves,and outright harm to them. Animus is intense dislike, easily distinguished by overly concerned and reactionary language and violence, in any form. It includes agitating in the interest of preventing trans people from being In the restroom by law or policy.

So any of those things, either individually or in combination, is what makes up transphobia.

Examples of Transphobic Statements

People who mutilate themselves like transgendered (Animus)

Transness is a mental illness. (Animus)

Transness is a medical condition (Anxiety)

I do not feel safe having male socialised trans women in my space. (Aversion, Anxiety)

Cis assigns a gender to someone. (Anxiety)

Transwomen are biologically male. (Animus)

Trans women are men (Animus)

Trans men are traitors (Animus)

trans politics enforces gender and gender roles by reducing womanhood to a stereotype made up by males. (Animus, Anxiety)

If we include gender identity protections in this bill, it will be harder to pass (Aversion, Anxiety)

The second you become pregnant you are a woman.(Animus, Aversion)

There are many other examples, readily found in pretty much any attack or pretend “Criticism” on trans lives or in any post that deals in trans issues coming from someone who proclaims themselves “trans critical”.

Here, in a new, expanded edition of six easy lessons, is How To Spot A Transphobe.

So here are 60 Ways to spot a Transphobe.

Lesson one:

1: If they think that cis has something to do with liking your body

2: If they think that cis has something to do with the clothes you wear or makeup

3: if they think that being trans has something to do with liking your body.

4: if they think that beings trans has something to do with the clothes you wear or make up

5: If they think that cis is a slur

6: If they think that gender is not composed of three to five distinct elements

7: If they think that being trans is a mental illness

8: If they think that being cis is a bad thing.

9: If they think that cis privilege has anything to do with someones’s sex or gender

10: If they think that biology says that trans women are male.

Lesson Two:

11: If they think that the points above are limited just to trans women, since we are talking about trans folk. Note that these are exemplars based on actual ideas held by people who hate trans people, and so the assertions are equally valid for all trans folk along the spectrum.

12: If they make an argument against trans women that features the idea of “male socialization”, yet never note the way this argument relies on racism because they don’t understand how it does so.

13: If they think calling a trans woman a man or male is not violence. Bonus: they are not only ignorant, they are also violent.

14: If they ever say ” it’s not like i ever go out of my way to message anyone ever and trigger them intentionally”, and pretend like their stuff doesn’t show up in tags or is reblogged or is said in public on tumblr since tumblr is a platform designed intentionally to make things visible to other people.

15: If they think that “gender abolition” is not a dog whistle for genocide of trans people.

16: If they think that bodily autonomy is great for women, but bad for for trans women by arguing that trans women have no place in the pro-choice movement.

17: If they are against sex work and never speak about how trans women of color are driven into it by the same forces that drive cis women of color into it and at the same ages.

18: If they think that trans women cannot be lesbians or that trans men cannot be gay men.

19: If they think that despite holding any of the items in this list they are an ally of the trans community.

20: If they argue that trans women represent a danger to cis women.

Lesson Three:

21: If they disagree with the term Cis.

22: If they think that Transness is a mental illness named gender dysphoria

23: If they argue that gender is a social construct but argue that sex is not a social construct.

24: If they argue against unisex restrooms because of risks associated with trans women.

25: If they argue for female only space instead of cis only space (these are two different things)

26: If they say they don’t hate trans people but use arguments that rely on seeing trans women as men, not only are they ignorant, they are also violent and hypocritical.

27: If they think that the treatment for trans children isn’t based on decades of research and study by experts in pediatric care.

28: if they think that Transness has always been a mental illness when it wasn’t introduced until after homosexuality was removed.

29: If they they think that trans women are just homophobic gay men.

30: If they say that trans women are not women because womanhood is not a feeling or identity

Lesson Four:

31: If they don’t agree with Trans Theory and think trans theory is the stuff from lesson one.

32: If they say things like cis privilege has something to do with a person’s “mode of presentation”

33: If they say things like “How can I, as someone who doesn’t subscribe to gender politics and does not have a gender identity, be “cis”?” Right before describing themselves as cis people.

34: If they say terf is a slur

35: If they argue for separate but equal like trans woman/ cis woman restrooms

36: If They say that a trans woman Ina relationship with another woman is “straight”

37: If they get upset at the idea of a women’s space including trans women

38: If they think that trans men in a women’s space is ok

39: If they think that when people say they are being essentialist, they leap to the conclusion it is about biological essentialism and never think about what the person says routinely.

40: If they make a habit of being violent, dishonest, prejudiced, bigoted, aversive, anxious, incompetent, ignorant, immoral, and unethical when it comes to trans people.

Lesson Five:

41: if they post any quote from Sheila Jeffreys, Julie Bindel, or Janice Raymond on their blogs without pointing out how they are all deeply transphobic

42: if they think that it is reasonable for trans people to engage in dialog with people who are violent towards them but refuse to acknowledge that violence.

43: If they think “cotton ceiling” is about forcing lesbians to have sex.

44: If they reference “Gender Identity Watch” or “OWL”.

45: If they talk about “redefining woman” the same way folks talk about “redefining marriage”. .

46: If they talk about gender as if it is not the way that society deals with physiological sex.

47: If they use phrases like “womyn born womyn”, “women born female”, or a half dozen other variations of the same thing.

48: If they think that Laverne Cox is a misogynist or that Janet Mock thinks positively of molestation of children.

49: If they argue that male socialization only affects males.

50: If they think that saying die cis scum is a threat.

Lesson Six

51: describes themselves as Trans critical

52: Say that Transness is a medical condition

53: Say that Dysphoria is required to be trans

54: Saying that disliking trans people is a legitimate response to their behavior of expanding and strengthening misogyny through their glorification of gender.

55: saying that trans people need to be nicer to trans critical people and other transphobic people

59:Sex is not a social construct (when used in reference to any of the above, it is an intellectually dishonest attempt to devalue the lives of trans people)

60: “I hate trans people”

Bonus Round:

61. They describe themselves as “Trans critical” or “gender critical” or say that they are arguing from that position.

62. They argue in favor of gender abolition, yet remain unaware of the basis of that argument or how it is colonizing and racist.

Be Aware:

Transphobes will frequently engage in racist, ableist, biphobic, and homophobic arguments. This is because they are misanthropes who lack common human decency as a direct result of the poinon and harm they are inflicting on themselves via their hate.

Note:

Any single one of those things is proof that the person involved has no idea what they are talking about and is actively engaged in worrying about the risks of, feeling disgusted or sickened by trans people or things around transness, fears being around trans people, or harbors an intense dislike of trans people.

All of which are forms of transphobia, an irrational mindset that affects their ability to accurately and honestly deal with the larger world around them. People who are transphobic are literally not in their right minds.

Transphobia comes from one or more of three distinct mindsets: Aversion, Anxiety, and Animus.

Aversion is things like being disgusted, in opposition to, identifying something as repugnant, and exhibiting strong feelings about this. Examples: getting agitated by the idea of a trans woman in the locker room, or worried about how someone’s pronouns might be “embarassing” to others.

Anxiety is distress, worry, concern, and overt anxiousness about something or someone that is strongly expressed in physical, literal, or metaphorical terms. Example: not wanting a trans woman in the locker room, or arguing that being trans is a medical condition.

Animus is a strong and intense dislike. It involves devaluing the lives of people, erasing their dignity, opposing their civil and human rights, denying them the ability to mark themselves,and outright harm to them. Example: trying to stop a law passed using the argument that a trans woman might be in a locker room, or that trans women as a class are a danger to women, or trying to decide for others if they are trans or not.

So any of those thing, either individually or in combination, is what makes up transphobia.

People saying the 60+ things noted above are ignorant of that, and ignorant as well of their own transphobia, and so think that what they are saying has some sort of value critically. Since none of them are true, there is no critical value in the statements, since they are essentially making shit up as they go.

It is important to recognize that the above examples are actual hate speech, and is recognized as such by both the ADL and the SPLC.

****WARNING*****

Transphobes are dangerous.

They are violent, they are dishonest, and they are both immoraland unethical.

Confronting Transphobes often leads to gang attacks on Tumblr and Twitter, and so it is not recommended that you confront a transphobe directly, unless you have the stomach and time for it.

They will actively seek to destroy your character and reputation; they will accuse you of all manner of things including murder, being a war criminal, being a class A hacker, having 500 blogs, being other people, a stalker, a rape apologist, a 60 year old linebacker, and that you make them feel like drinking bleach, just to touch on the surface of some of the more recent things that have been said about people.

So you must be strong when responding.

Transphobes are known for their ignorance, incompetence, dishonesty, deceit, violence, abuse, bigotry, prejudice, opposition to human and civil rights, immorality and lack of ethics, but sometimes spotting the things that make those points true can be tricky since, like most anti-lgbt folks, they try to seem liberal and put a lot of effort into that while actually being socially conservative and desiring a fascist ideal.

This long post should give you the tools to spot transphobes and other people who are all, without exception, dishonest, deceitful, abusive, violent, anti-lgbt, prejudiced, bigoted, immoral, unethical, ignorant, incompetent, and opposed to human and civil rights for all people.

The concept of Trans Critical, in and of itself, is based in Aversion derived from Anxiety and supported by Animus, so it is a fairly easy to spot examples.

Common Tactics used

One of the most common tactics employed by transphobic people is to look for a statement that triggers a non sequitur argument, is an argument in which its conclusion does not follow from its premises. In a non sequitur, the conclusion could be either true or false, but the argument is fallacious because there is a disconnection between the premise and the conclusion. An example of this is the statement:

“I dislike penises” is not a sexual orientation.

The statement is wholly true, in and of itself, Sexual orientations are not “likes penis, doesn’t like penis, can like penis, and doesn’t care about penis” because that doesn’t work.

However, often the response to such a statement will be “you support forcing lesbians to like dick”, which has nothing to do with the statement itself, but has much to do with the character of the messenger (ad hominem), and brings unrelated concepts to the premise (which is the factual and true statement).

This is commonly called derailing, and is a particular form of dishonest and deceitful tactic that employs a wide variety of dishonest and deceitful actions. In the example above, the dishonest derai is joined by the dishonesty of the ad hominem, and is also a strawman argument (asserting something that isn’t contained in the original premise or first statement), thus combining three distinct acts of dishonesty into a single sentence than in and of itself is not true (and so a lie).

Derailing, at any time, is an automatic “loss”, because the act of derailing is an act of arguing in bad faith.

The expression “bad faith” is associated with “double heartedness”, which is also translated as “double mindedness”.

A bad faith belief may be formed through self-deception, being double minded, or “of two minds”, which is associated with faith, belief, attitude, and loyalty. In the 1913 Webster’s Dictionary, bad faith was equated with being double hearted, “of two hearts”, or “a sustained form of deception which consists in entertaining or pretending to entertain one set of feelings, and acting as if influenced by another”.

The concept is similar to perfidy, or being “without faith”, in which deception is achieved when one side in a conflict promises to act in good faith (e.g. by raising a flag of surrender) with the intention of breaking that promise once the enemy has exposed himself.

After Jean-Paul Sartre’s analysis of the concepts of self deception and bad faith, bad faith has been examined in specialized fields as it pertains to self deception as two semi-independently acting minds within one mind, with one deceiving the other.

Some examples of bad faith include: a company representative who negotiates with union workers while having no intent of compromising; a prosecutor who argues a legal position that he knows to be false; an insurer who uses language and reasoning which are deliberately misleading in order to deny a claim.

Reasoned discussion is not possible with someone who is acting in bad faith, and ends immediately.

This flow chart outlines that process:

Bad faith is where one or more of the first three steps in the flow chart are not true.

In the previous example about derailing, the act of derailing, itself, is an act of not being willing to follow basic principles of reason, as honesty is a fundamental aspect of those principles, and so the person making that derail is indicating, at the very start, that they are not interested in a conversation, and are, instead, interested in attacking and engaging in a violent and abusive manner.

Responding to Anxiety, Aversion, & Animus

The best response to Anxiety, Aversion, & Animus is to provide examples of how the statements are any of those three things.

Cognitive Biases are often deeply embedded in Transphobic statements, particularly when Animus is involved, as Animus alters the fundamental ability of the individual to perceive things clearly.

Focalism – the tendency to rely too heavily, or “anchor,” on one trait or piece of information when making decisions – is widespread, relying primarily on the basis of their perceived natural order. “biology arguments” such as “but biologically they are male, so” tend to ignore wider considerations like compassion, human dignity, and human and civil rights.

The Backfire effect – when people react to disconfirming evidence by strengthening their beliefs — is also frequently encountered, and indeed, is evidence itself of the strength in the Animus.

The Belief bias – an effect where someone’s evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by the believability of the conclusion — is often noted among those who frequently profess or describe belief as a fundamental aspect of their opposition. This is not religious belief, though it can be, this is the sort of belief one is referencing when you say “I believe”.

Confirmation bias – the tendency to search for, interpret and remember information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions — is rather obvious after only a few exchanges, and is particularly widespread among “TERF” types and those professing to be Trans Critical.

Most importantly, all of these arguments are marked by Conservatism – the tendency to insufficiently revise one’s belief when presented with new evidence.

This is very important, as the individuals often do not realize that they are engaging in that conservative belief. To support their views, biased as they are, they will often rely on a handful of fallacies.

These fallacies are, in and of themselves, acts of dishonesty and deception, and are based in irrational thinking (which is to be expected when one is dealing with aversion, anxiety, or animus, since persons embracing such are fundamentally irrational).

The five most common versions of these, in my experience, are the following:

Strawman – This is where someone misrepresents someone’s argument or statement to make it easier to attack. By exaggerating, misrepresenting, or just completely fabricating someone’s argument or statement, it’s much easier to present your own position as being reasonable, but this kind of dishonesty serves to undermine honest rational debate. Example: After Will said that we should put more money into health and education, Warren responded by saying that he was surprised that Will hates our country so much that he wants to leave it defenceless by cutting military spending.

Incredulity: This happens where one found something difficult to understand, or are unaware of how it works, or made out like it’s probably not true. An excellent example of this is the notion that sex is a social construction — despite it being known to be such for decades and an accepted part of scientific discourse, they will refuse to acknowledge it, treating biology as inviolate, even though it is one of the sciences most affected by cultural shifts (see racism). Complex subjects like biological evolution through natural selection require some amount of understanding before one is able to make an informed judgement about the subject at hand; this fallacy is usually used in place of that understanding.Example: Kirk drew a picture of a fish and a human and with effusive disdain asked Richard if he really thought we were stupid enough to believe that a fish somehow turned into a human through just, like, random things happening over time.

Appeal to Nature, where it is argued that because something is ‘natural’ (biology, as an example) it is therefore valid, justified, inevitable, good or ideal. Many ‘natural’ things are also considered ‘good’, and this can bias our thinking; but naturalness itself doesn’t make something good or bad. For instance murder could be seen as very natural, but that doesn’t mean it’s good or justifiable. Example: The medicine man rolled into town on his bandwagon offering various natural remedies, such as very special plain water. He said that it was only natural that people should be wary of ‘artificial’ medicines such as antibiotics.

Purity Fallacies are where they make an appeal to purity as a way to dismiss relevant criticisms or flaws of an argument or statement. In this form of faulty reasoning one’s belief is rendered unfalsifiable because no matter how compelling the evidence is, one simply shifts the goalposts so that it wouldn’t apply to a supposedly ‘true’ example. This kind of post-rationalization is a way of avoiding valid criticisms of one’s argument. Example: Angus declares that Scotsmen do not put sugar on their porridge, to which Lachlan points out that he is a Scotsman and puts sugar on his porridge. Furious, like a true Scot, Angus yells that no true Scotsman sugars his porridge.

Loaded Question or Statement. Here they ask a question or make a statement that has a presumption built into it so that it can’t be answered without appearing to be uncaring, uninterested, supportive of a taboo, or similar act. Loaded question fallacies are particularly effective at derailing rational debates because of their inflammatory nature – the recipient of the loaded question often feels as if they are compelled to defend themselves and may appear flustered or on the back foot. Example: Grace and Helen were both romantically interested in Brad. One day, with Brad sitting within earshot, Grace asked in an inquisitive tone whether Helen was having any problems with a drug habit. A frequent example as well is “well, what about the poor children in (insert your country of choice) who are starving — if you care so much about this, why don’t care about them?”

Above all, remain calm, and understand that their goal is to hurt you. To hurt your feelings, to hurt your confidence, to hurt your reputation and self esteem, and all of it is for the sole purpose of making you shut up and go away.